Share your trail wish-list at upcoming public workshop

Trail users are invited to share their ideas for a comprehensive regional trail plan at a public workshop from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 13, at the Jackson County Library.

In particular, the regional trail plan will identify trail needs, such as a possible Mountains-to-Sea Trail connection between Bryson City and Sylva, and help tie together the greenway visions of neighboring communities into a regional system.

“There’s always been a lot of interest in hiking, mountain biking and horseback riding in this region,” said Sarah Graham, regional planner for the Southwestern Commission. “We hope to take some of the plans already completed by counties and towns and organize them into a cohesive regional vision for future trails.”

The workshop is being hosted by the Southwestern Commission as part of regional trail plan underway for seven counties in Western North Carolina.

Southwestern Commission, through a grant from the North Carolina Division of Parks and Recreation and its State Trails Program, is leading the regional trails inventory and concept plan for Cherokee, Clay, Haywood, Graham, Jackson, Macon and Swain Counties. Other workshops will be scheduled in other counties this fall.

The plan will result in a region-wide map of existing hiking trails, greenways, mountain bike trails, and some on-road bicycle routes. It will also include recommendations, based on public input, on where new trails, greenways or routes could go.

The Naturalist's Corner

This year will mark the 117th annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count (CBC.) The CBC is the longest-lived and largest citizen-science project in the world.

The count began in 1900. It was the brainchild of Frank Chapman, one of the officers of the fledgling Audubon Society. Chapman created the “bird census” as an alternative to the traditional Christmas “side-hunt,” a contest where groups would shoulder their arms and hit the fields and/or woods — the team that came back with the greatest number of corpses would be declared the winner.